In the long pause that followed, he looked right at his visitor before glancing away, his eyes having begun to fill.

“Y’know,” he finally continued, “kicking myself in the head while they were struggling, saying, ‘I could have probably helped them there.’ ”

Make no mistake, that he let down his teammates means something to Yasmani Grandal.

“There is no worse feeling,” he said, “than watching your teammates struggle and not being able to help.”

Implicit in that was the acknowledgment that being away was the harshest consequence.

Grandal had spent the bulk of the previous 10 minutes Friday essentially rationalizing that everyone makes mistakes, that he was trying to get and stay healthy by using what he did, that his 50-game suspension turned out to be a blessing of sorts.

Ultimately, that is an understandable, even admirable posture.

Grandal acknowledged wrongdoing publicly, once in November when his positive test for elevated levels of testosterone and suspension was announced and then again at spring training. He has apologized to his teammates, individually and as a group. He has served his time, paid (literally, went without pay) his price.

It’s time to move on.

That is a notion Grandal has to embrace.

“Yeah, it took a mental toll on me,” he said. “But we’re here now.”

Here, besides being at Triple-A Tucson for 10 games after two months of extended spring training, is the precipice of Grandal’s re-entrance to the majors.

In the lead-up to Tuesday’s official date that he is eligible to once again be a San Diego Padre, the rest of us have discussed at some length what Grandal has to do in order to be welcomed back by all involved.

The consensus among teammates has been resounding: stay clean, work hard, perform.

“The guy is going to have served his suspension, without pay. That’s a pretty stiff penalty,” third baseman Chase Headley said. “There are a number of guys who -- with Yasmani or any other player (returning from suspension) – are kind of waiting to see how, number one, a player handles himself coming back in the clubhouse and then how he’s going to perform. In a sense, he has to prove himself that he can come up and be a productive member of a big league baseball team.

“I told him, ‘I don’t agree with what you did, but you’re going to pay your penalty, and that’s enough for me.’ He won’t hear another thing about it from me.”

That’s not indifference from Headley. It’s forgiveness.

Headley was emphatic that he is sick of “the black eye” of performance enhancing drugs. But like virtually every professional athlete, he is going to allow latitude and offer redemption to a teammate provided he can contribute to the collective good.

Even catcher Nick Hundley, who a few weeks ago described Grandal as a player who “had a couple good months on steroids” and a week from now could be ceding playing time to him, said he’s ready to move forward.